Macabre...ish Book Review: The Talisman

The Talisman by Stephen King & Peter Straub

Twelve year old, Jack and his mother, Lily, retire B Movie Queen are running from Uncle Morgan aka Jack's Dad's business partner. See he wants something, something very valuable, the most valuable thing in the world, in fact, all of them. And Jack is one of the few people in all the world's who can even get near it. And since Morgan's greed knows know bounds, he will do what he has too and already has, to get what he wants.

Jack understands something is very wrong and with a new friend, Speedy, an old blues man, he comes to understand what he must do. Which means going back where it all started, where he and his mother ran from, across the country. And he must head there alone and on foot but is assured that he will have plenty of help along the way. But he must 'flip' and travel a special way, in a special place, The Territories. It will be faster and he will learn more about what's at stake as he fails.

Along the way he will experience magic and monsters, predators of every kind. He will gain and lose friends and death follows him the entire way. He's being hunted by everything from Man eating trees, pedophilic goat men, psychopathic human traffickers and an array of mutated animal/man hybrids but this is his destiny. He will visit one Hell after another and as his friends and foes fall, he gets closer to either his success or failure, either way, it will impact all of the worlds.

This is a phenomenal adventure story that's full of heart ache and horror. It is one of the many branches of Stephen King's universe. It's also the prequel to Black House and has some parallels in the Dark a Tower Series. If you like a long and epic story, I recommend this one.